The Weekly Wrap: July 19, 2026

In honor of my summer birthday, I took the coming week off from work. The library is already slow, so it's the perfect time to use some annual leave.

With my week off, I've decided I'm going to do one BIG productive thing a day. The rest of each day I will just putter about doing whatever floats my boat.

But the chore I don't want to do is recycle our electronics. We've got an entire bag (plus a computer monitor!) sitting in a bin in our front closet. This chore is such a pain. There's nothing local. Our city's pop-up collections are sporadic at best. And it seems the stores that collect materials change their rules or costs all the time. 

Inevitably, as soon as I tackle what we've already collected, something else will appear that needs to be recycled. It never ends.

So I'm just going to ignore this chore.

It's my birthday week, after all.

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• Enjoy some gorgeous astrophotography. [Peta Pixel]
• There's a mismatch in the labor force. [WaPo - gift link]
• Sugar in space! [NYT - gift link]
• How rosé is made. [Wine Folly]
• We all have some "bad" values that influence the choices we make. [A Cup of Ambition]

• Which global threats should we lose sleep over? [Up First]
• Must listen! The conversations we should all be having around end of life planning. [Culture Study]
• What makes this butterfly live so long? [Short Wave]
• The highway with a theme song. [Throughline]
• How they made the World Cup pitches. [Short Wave]

• While nothing will compare to seeing Project Hail Mary on the big screen, we rewatched it this week, and it's still a phenomenal movie. This one is going on my list of pantheon movies. [Amazon Prime]
• We're still watching the Tour de France every night. While the racing on flat stages is (usually) not very exciting, I'm loving the interviews and travel aspects of the coverage. This is what makes the Tour so great! It's more than just a bike race. [Peacock]

• Dinner is so much easier now that the kiddo's palette is expanding. Still, I always try to make at least one aspect of the meal relatable. For example, I made fish tacos using a frozen, breaded haddock. (Very close to the fish sticks she already knows.) I topped it with a slaw. I took her portion out before adding the "spicy" flavors. It was yummy! No recipe for this one, mostly just winged it.
• Stuffed pepper skillet is all the wonderful flavors of stuffed peppers with a lot less work and cook time. The recipe I made even used a pouch of microwavable rice. I have issues getting raw rice to cook in skillet dishes, so this was a great hack. I didn't drain the canned tomatoes so our dish was a touch "soupier" but the flavors were fantastic. [Eating Well]
• For my lunch meal prep, I was inspired by lemony cucumber couscous salad. I subbed the couscous for farro. It had a nice meaty bite. I also tossed in the remains of a bag of arugula we had in our veggie drawer. The addition worked really well with the other flavors. [Budget Bytes]